U.S. President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani speaks as Trump supporters gather by the White House ahead of his speech to contest the certification by the U.S. Congress of the results of the 2020 U.S. presidential election in Washington, January 6, 2021.
Jim Bourg | Reuters
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani will not face criminal charges in an investigation into whether he violated U.S. lobbying laws while doing business in Ukraine, federal prosecutors told a judge Monday.
Giuliani, who has acted as former President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer in the past, faced a federal grand jury probe in the Southern District of New York for two years related to his work in Ukraine. Before he was elected mayor in 1993, Giuliani was the U.S. Attorney for the SDNY.
The grand jury was examining whether he violated the U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act, and his attempts to oust Marie Yovanovitch, the American ambassador there.
Federal agents seized his electronic devices in New York in April 2021 as part of that investigation.
“The Government writes to notify the Court that the grand jury investigation that led to the issuance of the above-referenced warrants has concluded, and that based on information currently available to the Government, criminal charges are not forthcoming,” U.S. Attorney Damian Williams wrote Judge J. Paul Oetken on Monday.
Williams asked the judge in the same letter to terminate the appointment of former federal judge Barbara Jones as a special master, or watchdog, to review documents seized from Giuliani.
One of Giuliani’s lawyers, Arthur Aidala, told CNBC, “It’s very rare for the Southern District of New York to make such a definitive comment” about declining to press criminal charges.
“And we are very pleased but not surprised that they have done so,” Aidala said.
Ted Goodman, a spokesman for Giuliani, said, “The mayor has been completely and totally vindicated.”
“We just hope this will help bring to an end the continuous and unwarranted attacks on the mayor — a man who is quite literally the most successful prosecutor of the most dangerous criminals over the past fifty years,” Goodman said.
But Giuliani, along with Trump, still faces an ongoing criminal probe by a grand jury in Georgia, which is investigating interference in that state’s presidential election in 2020.
Another lawyer for Giuliani, Robert Costello, in August told The New York Times that he was notified that Giuliani was a target of the Georgia investigation.
Giuliani last year had his law license suspended in New York state because of what a judicial panel called his “demonstrably false and misleading statements to courts, lawmakers and the public at large in his capacity as lawyer” for Trump and the Trump campaign “in connection with Trump’s failed effort at reelection in 2020.”
“These false statements were made to improperly bolster respondent’s narrative that due to widespread voter fraud, victory in the 2020 United States presidential election was stolen from his client,” the panel said.
Giuliani’s license to practice law in Washington, D.C., soon after was suspended automatically as a result of the New York suspension.
Aidala said that Trump has not yet paid Giuliani for the legal work he performed on behalf of the then-president related to the 2020 election results.
